One is a streaming all-in-one and the other is an amplifier. Judge them on how many boxes you want and what you already own, not on the spec sheet alone.
| Area | Better | Why |
|---|
| Power | A | Arcam SA30 has more power - 130W against 100W into 8 ohms. That is about 1.1dB, which is a small step in loudness but real headroom on peaks. |
| Grip on hard loads | B | Primare I25 holds up better into a 4-ohm load: its output nearly doubles to 200W, where the other increases strongly. That matters with demanding speakers far more than the 8-ohm figure does. |
| Noise floor | A | Arcam SA30 is the quieter design on paper - 112dB against 100dB. Audible mainly with sensitive speakers in a quiet room. |
| Built-in DAC | A | Arcam SA30 has a DAC on board; the other needs an external one, which is another box, another power lead and another purchase. |
| Streaming | A | Only Arcam SA30 has AirPlay 2, Chromecast and Roon. |
| Analogue inputs | B | Primare I25 takes more analogue sources - 5 against 4. |
| Phono stage | depends | Arcam SA30 has a built-in phono stage (MM,MC) and Primare I25 does not. Decisive if you own a turntable, completely irrelevant if you do not - and an outboard phono stage is easy to add later either way. |
| Room to grow | evenly matched | The same expansion options on both. |
| Headphones | depends | Only Arcam SA30 has a headphone output. Worth something if you listen late, nothing if you never do. |
| Amplifier class | depends | Arcam SA30 is Class G and Primare I25 is Class D. Class G/H switches its supply rails to cut the heat a Class A/B design wastes; Class D runs cool and draws almost nothing at idle. Modern examples of both measure well - judge by the rest of the page. |
| Shelf space | depends | Arcam SA30 takes up about 17% less shelf area (1636cm² against 1970cm²), and it is 79mm shallower, which is the measurement that decides whether a rack door shuts. |
| Price | evenly matched | Priced within a few per cent of each other. |
| Watts per dollar | A | Arcam SA30 is the cheaper watt - about $25 per watt against $33. A blunt measure, and it says nothing about how either sounds, but it is the honest one for raw output. |
A Arcam SA30 B Primare I25
depends neither is better in the abstract - it turns on your room, your system or how you will use them. Only specs published for both amplifiers are judged; anything missing on either side is left out rather than guessed.
Which should you choose?
Arcam SA30 has the edge on paper, though not by much. The rows marked "depends" are more likely to decide this than the score is. If your speakers are a difficult load - 4 ohms nominal, big woofers, or a sensitivity in the low 80s - Primare I25 is the safer partner, because how an amplifier behaves when the impedance drops matters more than its 8-ohm rating. If you play records, Arcam SA30 saves you buying a phono stage; if you do not, ignore that row entirely.
What a spec sheet cannot show: how either sounds with your speakers, how the controls feel day to day, and what the app is like to live with - which is where most all-in-one amplifiers are actually won or lost. Power figures are the manufacturers' own and are not measured to a common standard, so treat small differences as noise. If you can hear both, that will tell you more than any row above.